165. Why Avoiding Your Feelings Makes Everything Worse with Jenna Hollenstein

Understanding Disordered Eating

You know that feeling when you’d rather do literally anything than sit with your own emotions? Like, suddenly, cleaning out your junk drawer or reorganizing your spice rack sounds way more appealing than dealing with that uncomfortable feeling creeping in? Yeah, we’ve all been there.

The truth is, our brains are wired to avoid pain and chase comfort—it’s a survival thing. The more we run from discomfort, the stronger it gets. It’s like that pushy friend who won’t take a hint and just keeps showing up.

In this episode, I’m joined by Jenna Hollenstein for a second time! Jenna Hollenstein, MS, RDN, CDN, is an anti-diet dietitian-nutritionist, certified Intuitive Eating Counselor, speaker, meditation teacher, and author of five books, including Eat to Love and Intuitive Eating for Life. She blends Intuitive Eating with mindfulness to help people transform food and body shame into joyful eating and movement.

Tweetable Quotes

"We are not machines that are going to operate exactly as we want to operate." - Rachelle Heinemann

"It takes a fair amount of mindfulness to say, I'm struggling right now. And I'm going to do my best to show up to what I had planned to do." - Jenna Hollenstein

"We have to build the muscle of being with discomfort, and part of how we do that is by allowing ourselves to experience discomfort." - Jenna Hollenstein

"Sitting with your emotions doesn’t mean you have to like them—it just means you stop running from them." - Jenna Hollenstein

"Your brain thinks it’s protecting you by avoiding discomfort, but all it’s really doing is delaying the inevitable." - Jenna Hollenstein

"Growth doesn’t come from feeling good all the time. It comes from learning to be okay when things aren’t easy." - Jenna Hollenstein

"If you never let yourself sit in discomfort, how will you ever build the resilience to handle hard things?" - Jenna Hollenstein

"Most of the time, the thing we’re avoiding isn’t actually as bad as we’ve built it up to be in our heads." - Jenna Hollenstein

Resources

Visit Jenna’s Website Here!

Connect with Jenna on Instagram!

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